


easy tonight (matters of the heart)

by yerimoney



Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: F/F, Memories, Mutual Attraction, Party, Past Relationship(s), Returning Home, Short as hell, i only wrote this messily, seulrene is not romantic lmfao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28546950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yerimoney/pseuds/yerimoney
Summary: or you can stay afraid, or slit the throat of fear and be brave / and scratch a little itch 'til you're moving like a motherfucker up in this bitch
Relationships: Bae Joohyun | Irene/Kang Seulgi, Bae Joohyun | Irene/Park Sooyoung | Joy
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	1. solipsism

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by "let me down easy" by gang of youths. check out the song and the live performance, it's off its fucking rocker. written in maybe eight to ten minutes. life's been getting better so maybe my fics will get (much) shorter and.... livelier? if you want more, well, we'll see

“it’s pretty easy,” sooyoung starts, her chuckle spilling off her shoulders in the red light of the room. it glows, like a halo around her sprawled figure. “what did you want from tonight?”

_ you,  _ joohyun’s brain sounds off, like a teleprompter unwanted by her conscience. she shakes it off with a shake of her head. “i don’t know. maybe kiss someone.”

“okay.” a tilt of the head, her eyes flicking to the corner of the ceiling. she’s thinking. “and what do you need to do that?”

“um,” joohyun laughs a little. isn’t this simplifying things a little too much? she tries to think of it.

first party in college. someone she’ll hopefully forget in a week but won’t be too awkward with after a month. and hell, whatever. she’s as young as it gets. “someone pretty,” she decides. “like, really pretty.”

“and where... can you find that?” sooyoung prompts again.

the question is unasked, and it’s almost unanswered if sooyoung hadn’t sat up a little straighter and leaned forward a little more. and everything clicks, like an epiphany joohyun has for a sorry life. 

_ aren’t i in front of you right now? _

so whatever. no regrets.

sooyoung’s lips taste like strawberry champagne, sweet and sticky. the hand on the back of joohyun’s neck is warm and the one on her collar is strong, pulling her in, even when joohyun knows she doesn’t need to.


	2. lemonade

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> will i ever write more? who knows? maybe i wrote this in an hour? half an hour?

“if you ever want something, just remember there are four steps to get it, sooyoung.” her dad tells her over teatime, a jam biscuit in his hand and coffee in the other. “first, what do you want? secondly, what do you need to do that? lastly, where can you find what you need?”

she furrows her eyebrows then, continuing to write her paper on the keyboard of her laptop. “and the fourth one?”

“well,” he takes a bite of his biscuit, as if already knowing the embarrassment in his next line, “don’t ever stop believing in love.”

she immediately grabs one of the biscuits from her plate and throws it at him (“so cheesy!”), and he laughs while dodging it. the biscuit falls to the ground, flour freshly cracked onto white marble, and when sooyoung widens her eyes at her dad he does the same. “don’t tell-”

_ “clean that up!”  _ her mother calls from the other side of the room.

she barely believes the last step up ‘til she’s in college. it’s her first night and seulgi is being annoying and telling her that they  _ have  _ to go to this band’s concert, because they’re the university’s designated signature popular recognized band or whatever, and sooyoung can’t really resist it when seulgi pouts at her with that face of hers.

so whatever. no regrets.

it’s her first night in college and sooyoung looks up from the sweaty crowd to the stage, where the lights have begun to dim. everyone begins to scream as the beginning notes are played on violin- cello? who knows- and impossibly, the screams get louder as the lead singer appears, in that way all lead singers appear - spotlight suddenly on them, as if their presence demands a show.

once she starts dancing, sooyoung’s stuck to the floor. and once bae joohyun turns around with a smirk on her face, sooyoung realizes she’ll probably never be able to look away.

joohyun’s voice is deep and soothing like a radio on low static,  _ “honey it’s no secret that with matters of the heart- i’m reserved, i’m irrational and rarely ever start,”  _ and... she doesn’t ever stop dancing.

she moves along to the beat with her hips to the shouts of the crowd, slides herself across the stage like a fucking madman, laughs as everyone sings with her, shouts every last line from each verse because everyone holds it to their heart like a prayer and expels it from their mouth like a mantra. 

sooyoung could barely fucking care for the lyrics. they’re probably some sort of words that come out of whatever jumble one sad university student can come up with their mouth. but she absolutely adores the ease joohyun holds with the stage, like meeting an old friend.

and then it happens.

_ “honey it’s no secret that i’ve been losing my way,”  _ joohyun pauses for dramatic effect, and it actually does have an effect - the crowd coos  _ “aw,”  _ like the chorus from a play, and the singer starts to laugh again.  _ “in the weirdest of moments and the stupidest of ways-” _

sooyoung knows it exists, because seulgi has told her about it, like, a hundred times. has never shut up about it. but when joohyun’s gaze lands on her and her alone and the words spill from her mouth like a personal promise accompanied by a sloppy grin- _ “but hey i’m still young, it’s gonna be okay; i’ve got solipsism baby and i’ve brought lemonade!”  _ sooyoung’s barely unprepared by how easily she starts to believe

as everything goes, it’s only five seconds before joohyun’s eyes flick away and land on another lucky person’s, even pointing towards them for good measure. but sooyoung can’t ever forget those five seconds, and even after watching joohyun end the song with a playful shake of her hips and after the entire concert ends and sooyoung goes back to her dorm tired and aching from a night of dancing, all that flashes at the back of her eyelids is the hope promised in joohyun’s eyes.


	3. summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> half a memory of seulgi returning to her hometown to realize all she's left behind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> inspired by "fear and trembling" by gang of youths (same artist who's been fueling this work). there are pieces of a story here but i'm not really here to write a story, i'm just writing what's happening in my head when i listen to this fantastic band. it's evident there's more to this! but if i ever wrote more of it i'd only organize it later

seulgi rips the picture frame off the wall and throws it to the ground, hearing the glass smash against the floor.

_ “You’re a coward!” she’d screamed back then, in that dingy little shop full of wasted hope. “You’re a coward, and you know it best.” _

_ joohyun grips the piece of glass in her hand, so hard that her entire body almost trembles with rage and fear. “Tell me,” she says, coldly. her voice is as cold as the metal that lines the hook board on her walls. the glass pierces her tightly raised hand and brings blood forth, trickling down to the old tiles in the house. “How exactly I’m a coward.” _

she screams in all her frustration and with all the anger she can muster, screaming at a world that’s long given up on her and joohyun. she topples the books placed neatly on her table with their ostentatious titles like  _ Songwriting: A Guide to Touching The Human Soul  _ and  _ Stories for Listening  _ and watches as they fly across her vision to the other side of the room. she feels the tears rise up her throat and try to choke her from the inside.

_ “you could be a part of the band,” joohyun had told her then, her smile an emblem of inspiration to the student body then and to seulgi. she was kneeling at the edge of her seat, like a coy invitation to an entirely new world. “we do need another bassist.” _

_ she said she’d think about it. she told her ‘yes’ the next day. _

the chair flips. the papers fly. and seulgi’s rage whirls around her like an unforgiving god, tainted with every single dream she’s watched go down the drain and every part of the future she’s tried to hide away from like avoiding a gateway into faithlessness.

_ joohyun waits for her answer. seulgi thinks it’s all too self-explanatory. explained in the sight of seungwan lounging outside in an old wooden chair, that will be forgotten once the wind sweeps away what’s left of this town, explained in the way joohyun winces when she talks about yerim having left, explained in the way seulgi will never bring  _ her  _ up. _

_ but seulgi has never been one for real talk. so like every dishonest lyricist she’s ever looked up to, she skirts around the subject in the most hurtful way she can think possible. “Sooyoung.” _

she picks up the picture, her fingers catching the glass and bleeding out onto the paper, the dirt stains sharing themselves between her present figure and the flimsy documentation of her past, a stupid picture with three people in the middle. the tears make her cough and make her eyes blink, but her vision focuses to stare at the family she thought would always be together once.

_ joohyun’s eyes shift to the blood on the floor, and back to seulgi’s face. “She left,” she states. “We all know that.” _

_ “You didn’t even bother to make her stay.” _

_ the roar in joohyun’s voice makes seulgi’s heart clench in fear and glee. “There are better things in New York!” the sentence ends shakily. she drops the glass. “She left for better things. She wasn’t going to get far here, we knew that.” _

joohyun’s laugh is infectious even in pictures, and it makes seulgi smile even as the tears run down her face and the snot blocks her breathing — if god plays jokes, it must take the form of a lonely figure in a forgotten house, who turned from seulgi’s greatest hero to an empty shell with a terrified conscience.

_ “And now we know what staying here would have ended up like,” she sneers. _

_ joohyun’s entire body stills. and the silence after is deafening, as she turns to her worktable and continues to work on her current piece. seulgi waits until she can’t anymore and turns to leave through the door. _

_ “Seulgi,” she hears from behind. her hand rests on the frame.  _

_ “Why did you come back?” _

_ something in her steels. “I stopped being scared of this place.” _

sooyoung is a star, poised perfectly in the middle of the two. her arms loop around seulgi and joohyun, her smile bright and hopeful, and seulgi wonders if she did end up as the better of the three after all.

(she wonders whether joohyun will ever stop being terrified of being hurt. she wonders if she could herself.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kudos and comments very appreciated ^ ^


End file.
